“Too many stray dogs and cattle”

March 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

CHENNAI, VISAKHAPATNAM, PORT BLAIR
–The first phase of disaster relief is rescue.
Then comes accommodating refuges, followed by
rebuilding.
“Our immediate relief activities have
been now replaced by the medium term to long term
relief work made necessary by the animals we have
rescued,” Blue Cross of India director Chinny
Krishna told ANIMAL PEOPLE, two months after the
December 26, 2004 tsunami.
Eager to start rebuilding, including
developing India’s first formal animal disaster
relief plan, Krishna found himself still in the
middle of refugee accommodation.
“The large number of rescued animals, as
well as those surrendered by people who said they
found them in their neighborhoods, have made
things difficult at our Guindy center,” Krishna
explained. “A rescued pig and her litter of
eight piglets occupy a large area behind our
cattle shed. Rescued dogs occupy every available
step on the staircases, and the recent rains in
Chennai have sent all the dogs normally in the
four-acre outdoor part of the shelter scurrying
indoors to have a roof over their heads!”

Poultry issues

January 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

The Knesset, the Israeli parliament, on January 3, 2005
banned force-feeding ducks and geese to produce foie gras, effective
at the end of the month, one day after the Knesset Education
Committee refused a request from the Agriculture Ministry to delay
the ban until the end of March. Israel ranked fourth globally in
foie gras exports, the Israeli foie gras industry was worth $16.5
million per year, it employed 500 people, and it killed about
700,000 ducks and geese per year as of August 11, 2003. Then the
Israeli Supreme Court ruled that force-feeding ducks and geese
violated Israeli law, but allowed the industry an 18-month phase-out.

A California Court of Appeals panel in San Francisco on
January 11, 2005 upheld San Francisco Superior Court Judge David
Garcia’s March 2003 dismissal of a lawsuit filed by PETA in December
2002 against the California Milk Producers Advisory Board for alleged
false advertising. PETA argued that the slogan “Great cheese comes
from happy cows. Happy cows come from California” misrepresents the
reality of how dairy cattle are raised. Garcia ruled that the laws
against false advertising and unfair competition laws cited by PETA
exempt government agencies.

E.U. fails to cut livestock hauling time

December 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2004:

BRUSSELS–British animal health and welfare minister Ben
Bradshaw called new European Union regulations on livestock transport
adopted on November 22 “an important step in improving the welfare of
animals in transit,” and proclaimed his government “particularly
pleased that [new rules] meet the strong concerns in the U.K. about
the live transport of horses.”
Slamming Bradshaw and the other members of the EU Council of
Agriculture Ministers for “cowardice,” Compassion In World Farming
responded that the new rules do no such thing.
Summarized Geoff Meade of The Scotsman, “Animal welfare
improvements include limited travel for ‘unbroken’ horses and a new
requirement that horses on long journeys must be carried in
individual stalls. A range of other measures, for all animals,
include improved training and certification of transporters, tighter
rules on the fitness of animals to travel, a review next year of
current rules on transporter temperature and ventilation, and
increased cooperation between EU governments to enforce the rules.”
However, Meade noted, “The permitted traveling hours remain
unchanged. Pigs can be transported for 24 hours without a break,
with access to water; horses can travel up to 24 hours if watered
every eight hours; and cattle, sheep, and goats can be in transit
for 29 hours with just a one-hour break.”

PETA slaughterhouse video stirs dispute over kosher standards

December 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2004:

POSTVILLE, Iowa–AgriProcessors Inc., the only U.S.
slaughterhouse authorized to export meat to Israel, agreed on
December 7, 2004 to cease ripping the trachea and esophagus out of
cattle immediately after their throats are cut, and to use a captive
bolt gun to dispatch cattle who try to regain their footing after the
throat-cutting. Meat from those cattle will no longer be sold as
kosher.
AgriProcessors, marketing under the name “Aaron’s Best,”
denied that pulling the windpipes out of living cattle was part of
their killing routine, but workers were shown doing it in a
30-minute undercover video released by PETA on November 30. A PETA
staff member worked at AgriProcessors for seven weeks during the
summer of 2004.
Kosher experts disagreed as to whether the throat-tearing met
kosher requirements. Orthodox Union chief rabbis Menachem Genack and
Yisroel Blsky said it was “gruesome” but kosher; Orthodox Union
executive vice president Tzvi Hersh Weinreb called it “especially
inhumane” and “generally unacceptable”; Shiumon Cohen of the British
organization Shchita U.K. said it was not kosher; and Ezra Raful,
chief of international slaughter supevision for the chief rabbinate
of Israel, told the Jerusalem Post that technically the slaughter
was kosher, but definitely did not follow recommended practice.

PETA tells Aussies to back away from sheep’s behinds

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

SYDNEY–Long resisting animal welfare reform, Australian
sheep trade defenses may be unraveling, after PETA yanked the thread
of the New York City-based outdoor fashion retailer Abercrombie &
Fitch in October 2004 with the threat of a boycott hitting Australian
wool goods.
Australia exports about $3 billion U.S. worth of wool per
year, competing against synthetic fibres largely on the cachet of
being a natural product. Market surveys show that consumers who
prefer “natural” also prefer “cruelty-free.” Thus U.S. retail fur
sales fell by half in three years of intensive anti-cruelty
campaigning, 1988-1991, while furriers’ defense of fur as
“natural” largely failed.
Marketing a rival product to fur, the wool industry tried to stay
inconspicuous, and mostly succeeded. Within the animal rights
movement, only Christine Townend in her 1985 book Pulling The Wool
argued that the wool industry also should become a priority
target–until now.

Farm Animals

Appellate verdicts: 1st Amendment, trapping, pigs

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Confining anti-circus and rodeo
protesters to “free expression zones” far from
the entrance to the state-owned Cow Palace arena
in San Francisco violates their First Amend-ment
rights to freedom of speech and assembly, a
three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals ruled on October 20, 2004.
“Cordoning protesters off in a zone the size of a
parking space, located over 200 feet from the
entrance, far from encouraging interaction with
them, is more likely to give the impression to
passers-by that these are people to be avoided,”
wrote Judge Martha Berzon.

The National Trappers Association does
not have legal standing to try to overturn the
1998 California ballot Proposition 4 ban on
leghold traps and the poisons sodium cyanide and
Compound 1080, ruled U.S. District Judge Thelton
Hender-son during the third week of October 2004.

Chinese live markets feed the fur trade

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

NEW YORK CITY–“Real Fur Is Fun Again,”
headlined the October 11 edition of Newsweek.
“It’s less expensive and more popular than ever.
But as young people snuggle up, where are the
protesters?”
Fur appeared on 36 of the 270 pages in
the “Women’s Fashion Fall 2004” edition of The
New York Times Style Magazine: as many pages as
in all editions from 2001 through 2003 combined.
Fur is more visible now than at any time
in the past 20 years. Furriers are buying more
ad space in The New York Times and other
periodicals known to reach affluent younger
women, anticipating a profitable winter–if the
economy holds up.
But furriers have often misread market
demand. Expecting a boom in the winters of
1993/1994 and 1997/1998, chiefly through
believing their own propaganda, furriers drove
fur pelt prices up at auction with panic buying
to increase inventory, stepped up their
advertising, and experienced busts instead.

New concept draft of Korean animal protection law eliminates potential exemptions for “meat” dogs & cats

October 2, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

SEOUL–More than a year of acrimony over
animal definitions in a 2003 draft update of the
1991 South Korean animal protection law appeared
to be resolved on October 5, 2004 when the
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry presented a
new draft of recommendations for legislation
called Comprehensive Measures for Animal
Protection.
Comprehensive Measures appears to
eliminate loopholes in the 2003 draft update that
might have exempted dogs and cats raised for meat
from coverage.

Anti- foie gras activists swallow a promise instead of action in California “victory”

October 2, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

SACRAMENTO–Farm Sanctuary, In Defense
of Animals, PETA, and the Humane Society of the
U.S. declared victory on September 29, 2004 when
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed
a bill that will purportedly ban force-feeding
ducks and geese to produce foie gras, effective
in 2012. But as the San Francisco Chronicle
reported, “The state’s lone farm engaged in the
practice, Sonoma Foie Gras, also hailed it as a
victory.”
“We supported this bill and thank the
governor and the legislature,” Sonoma Foie Gras
owner Guillermo Gonzalez e-mailed to Andrew
Gumbel and John Lichfield of The Independent, a
London newspaper that covered the issue for
British readers.
The British-based organization Compassion
In World Farming initially applauded the
California bill, but CIWF European Coalition for
Farm Animals campaign coordinator Barbara Dias
Pais on October 7 acknowledged to ANIMAL PEOPLE
that “the news was indeed badly misinterpreted by
many of us here in Europe.”

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